The ER staff are trained to take care of emergencies. We* are staffed to barely have enough time to do that. No one in an ER has the time or training to take care of a child that is boarding in their department, let along a child that needs more than basic care. It isn’t that we are frustrated to have a kid around, it is that we recognize this as a wholly unhealthy, unacceptable and emotionally unsafe milieu for a child.
*I do not work at the UCH Longmont facility, but I am an ER nurse nearby.
